When Colorado fired Dan Hawkins as football coach in 2010, I made a beeline for Mark Helfrich as soon as Oregon's practice ended.

I was The Oregonian's UO football beat writer then. Helfrich was Oregon's offensive coordinator and a former assistant at Colorado. I wanted to know whether Helfrich was interested in the CU job.

Helfrich expressed sympathy for Hawkins and his staff, but said he was happy where he was.

Choosing not to pursue the opening and hunkering down at Oregon turned out to be an astute career move. Three years later, Helfrich is head coach at Oregon, the nation's No. 2 team. Colorado has changed coaches yet again.

In fact, Helfrich has been so successful so quickly that his name is beginning to pop up on lists -- this one by Jeremy Fowler of CBSSports.com -- of coaches who probably will be targets for, say, Texas when the Longhorns jettison Mack Brown.

It's unlikely to be the last time we see Helfrich's name on a list of possible successors for a high-profile job. We're still relatively early in the season, but the coaching carousel already is spinning in the wake of firings at USC and Connecticut.

I think Helfrich still is happy where he is. He is a born-and-bred Oregonian who went to Marshfield High School in Coos Bay and Southern Oregon University. He began his college coaching career as a graduate assistant on Mike Bellotti's staff at Oregon.

And while Texas could wave a lot money at him, I suspect the Ducks could match.